Since the month of May marks the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the contraceptive pill to the US, I also begin with a post on that topic at Knitting Clio. In a fascinating (if longwinded) piece, Heather Munro Prescott argues that in spite of what Gloria Steinem might have said, a ‘contraceptive revolution’ didn’t just magically happen on US college campuses once the pill first appeared. It only started to happen after students campaigned hard for doctors to make it available.

Things Turn-of-the-Century

The swoony image below is from the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Munich magazine, Jugend, meaning ‘youth’. Over the past month, I’ve been loving the series of posts about this sumptuous Art Nouveau mag on the classy arts-journalism blog, The Blue Lantern. Lovers of Art Nouveau and fin de siecle German history, feast your eyes here and here and here and here.

For those interested in the same period in America, Edwardian Promenade‘s Evangeline Holland comes up with her usual goods in a piece on the origins of the tuxedo at Tuxedo Park. Love the pics and the detail as always, Evangeline.

Far more seriously, Greenman Tim gives us the back-story to the attempted lynching of Edgar Freeman in Connecticut in 1878. Edgar Freeman was an African-American man accused of raping a 7 year-old white girl that year. As Greenman Tim argues, it was not in fact clear that Freeman was guilty of the crime.

Things Nineteenth Century

For those interested in heading back further into the nineteenth century, check out Karen Linkletter’s thoughtful piece on Abraham Lincoln’s legacy, and differing interpretations of his ‘House Divided’ Speech, at Milestone Documents.

You can also read the Wellcome Library blog’s brilliant excursus on ‘Siamese Twins‘, so-called after a famous conjoined duo hit European freak shows in the 1830s.

At the Virtual Dime Museum, readers will be charmed by a post on a newspaper begun by a prisoner at Brooklyn’s Raymond-St Jail in the 1870s. Read some great excerpts from the jailbird’s paper if you please.

The Long View

At Zenobia: Empress of the East, Judith Weingarten introduces us to Eti, a strangely deformed female figure who appears as an image in Egypt’s Deir-el-Bahri temple. Eti is described in ancient texts as the ‘Queen of Punt’. For decades, scholars have argued about where this mysterious Punt might be. As Weingarten says, however, archeologists have now finally discovered its location. Go to the post for the breaking news.

If you can bear the ugly ads littering The Web Urbanist, Steve writes there about 10 ancient cities still inhabited today. The list includes Susa (Iran), Cholula (Mexico) and Damascus (Syria) – but to find out the rest, you’ll have to read on.

Finally, you can read about the Ice Age and view putative maps of the era at History Moments care of Jack le Moine.

That’s it for me for this month, history friends. Keep an eye out for the next host of the Carnival on the History Carnival site – or better still, offer to host it yourself!

Larrikins: A History

From the true-blue Crocodile Hunter to the blue humour of Stiffy and Mo, from the Beaconsfield miners to The Sentimental Bloke, Australia has often been said to possess a ‘larrikin streak’.

Today, being a larrikin has positive connotations and we think of it as the key to unlocking the Australian identity: a bloke who refuses to stand on ceremony and is a bit of scally wag. When it first emerged around 1870, however, larrikin was a term of abuse, used to describe teenage, working-class hell-raisers who populated dance halls and cheap theatres. Crucially, the early larrikins were female as well as male.

Larrikins: A History takes a trip through the street-based youth subculture known as larrikinism between 1870 and 1920. Swerving through the streets of Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, it offers a glimpse into the lives of Australia’s first larrikins, including bare knuckle-fighting, football-barracking, and knicker-flashing teenage girls. Along the way, it reveals much that is unexpected about the development of Australia’s larrikin streak to present fascinating historical perspectives on hot ‘youth issues’ today, including gang violence, racist riots, and raunch culture among adolescent girls.